Fertility Rates in Red and Blue States: Before and After COVID-19

Abstract

The fertility rate is a common measure of population growth or decline. Before the pandemic, the U.S. fertility rate steadily declined and dropped an additional 4 percent in 2020, the year the first case of COVID-19 was reported in the U.S. Fertility rates in 2021 rebounded 1 percent from the rate in 2020, but did not move in tandem across all states. This study aims to determine how fertility rates changed one year before, during, and after the pandemic between red states and blue states that voted, respectively, for the Republican or Democratic presidential candidate in the 2016 and 2020 U.S. elections. Fertility rates were, on average, significantly higher all three years in red states than in either blue states or purple states, namely states that changed color from red to blue between 2016 and 2020.